Renegade's Looting Sprees

[Renegade]

I don't post on the forum very often, but I figured this would be a good time to share my stories about salvaged Macs.

I started collecting Macs around the year 2000. It’s no secret that back then, it was relatively easy to find them at reasonable prices. I was also lucky enough to get my hands on a stash of Apple parts that had clearly come from an Apple reseller that had gone out of business.

Little by little, I accumulated quite a few Macs—the kind that make people who don’t share our passion ask “what on earth is he doing with all that old junk?”.

 

[Renegade]

So, the most recent pickup took place last night.

A guy who lives a 45-minute drive from my place was selling a few Macs on a classifieds site. Not really expecting anything to come of it, I made a modest offer, and the guy replied very quickly, “Okay, but then they have to go TONIGHT.”
So I agreed and headed over. The Macs matched the description in the ad, which was “in pretty bad shape.”

Picture from the seller:


So we have two G4 Sawtooths, a stripped-down SE, a half-wrecked iMac G5, a crumbled Power Mac 8500/150, and a Performa 5300. As a bonus, I received an Agfa Arcus SCSI scanner, a magneto-optical drive, and an external hard drive.

After a quick inspection before trying to get some sleep (hello, heat wave), I realized that the only Mac still working is the 5300 (even though its plastic is starting to fall apart, as expected)..
The SE is missing its motherboard (no big deal—I have tons of them), almost all its screws, and its disk drive carriage. The CRT tube, of course, has a broken neck. I think this will be the first machine I’ll try to repair.